Critical Realism in the Victorian Age

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Critical Realism in the Victorian Age
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Victorian Novelists
Chronologically the Victorian period roughly
coincides with the reign of Queen Victoria over
England from 1836 to 1901.
In literature, the early Victorian age can be
said to be the age of critical realism. The
critical realism of the 19th century flourished
in the forties and in the early fifties.
Charles Dickens
Charlotte Brontë
Emily Brontë
William M. Thackeray
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The Victorian Age critical realism

• The critical realists described with much
  vividness and artistic skill the chief trait of
  the English society, and they criticized the
  capitalist system from a democratic viewpoint and
  delineated the crying contradictions of the
  social reality of that time.
• The English critical realists of the 19th century
  not only gave a satirical portrayal of the
  bourgeoisie and all the ruling classes, but also
  showed profound sympathy for the common people.

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Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

• Without doubt the most popular of Victorian
  writers was Charles Dickens. From modest origins
  this clerk to Hansard became a world figure. His
  combination of sentimentality and his attacks on
  the social evils of the day made him highly
  successful. His readings added to his fame but
  hastened his death.

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Charles Dickens

• Oliver Twist
• David Copperfield
• Great Expectations
• A Tale of Two Cities

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Oliver Twist????

• It is Dickenss first true novel.
• The language in Oliver Twist isn't hard to
  understand, and neither is the imagery and
  symbolism.
• This simplicity has helped to make Oliver Twist a
  very satisfying book to read.

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The Story

• The first eleven chapters cover Oliver's story
  from his birth to his rescue by Brownlow.
• The 2nd section, Chapters 12 through 39, is
  complicated by the introduction of many new
  characters and events. Here Oliver is kidnapped,
  robberies are planned, and romances develop.
  Monks and Fagin plot to destroy Oliver.
• In the final chapters, from XL to LIII, all of
  the unanswered questions about Oliver's
  background are answered and he is finally rescued
  once and for all. The good characters are
  rewarded with the promise of future happiness,
  and the evil ones are punished.

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Oliver Twist Chapter II

• Oliver is sent to a branch-workhouse. The
  overseer, Mrs. Mann, receives an adequate sum for
  each childs upkeep, but she keeps most of the
  money and lets the children go hungry, sometimes
  even letting them die.
• On Olivers 9th birthday, Mr. Bumble, the parish
  beadle, informs Mrs. Mann that Oliver is too old
  to stay at her establishment and must return to
  the workhouse. Before Oliver departs, Mrs. Mann
  gives him some bread and butter so that he will
  not seem too hungry at the workhouse.
• One night at dinner, the children at the
  workhouse cast lots, determining that whoever
  loses shall be required to ask for more food for
  the boy. Oliver loses, and is to ask for more
  food at supper. His request so shocks the
  authorities that they offer five pounds as a
  reward to anyone who will take Oliver off of
  their hands.

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Oliver Twist Chapter III

• In the parish, Oliver has been flogged and then
  locked in a dark room as a public example.
• Mr. Gamfield, a brutish chimney sweep, offers to
  take Oliver on as an apprentice. Because several
  boys have died under his supervision, the board
  considers five pounds too large a reward, and
  they settle on just over three pounds.
• Mr. Bumble, Mr. Gamfield, and Oliver appear
  before a magistrate to seal the bargain. At the
  last minute, the magistrate notices Olivers
  pale, alarmed face. He asks the boy why he looks
  so terrified. Oliver falls on his knees and begs
  that he be locked in a room, beaten, killed, or
  any other punishment besides being apprenticed to
  Mr. Gamfield.
• The magistrate refuses to approve the
  apprenticeship, and the workhouse authorities
  again advertise Olivers availability.

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Outrage at injustice

• Dickens attacked the social evils of his times
  such as poor houses, unjust courts, greedy
  management and the underworld.
• Oliver Twist is an extreme criticism of Victorian
  societys treatment of the poor. In this part of
  the story, Dickens shows his outrage at injustice
  by describing the condition prevailing in the
  workhouse.
• In the narrative, the workhouse functions as a
  sign of the moral hypocrisy of the working class.
  Mrs. Mann steals from the children in her care,
  feeding and clothing them inadequately.
  Workhouses were established to save the poor from
  starvation, disease, and filth, but in fact they
  end up visiting precisely those hardships on the
  poor.

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Middle-class Hypocrisy Brutality

• The assumption on the part of the middle-class
  characters that the lower classes are naturally
  base, criminal, and filthy serves to support
  their vision of themselves as a clean and morally
  upright social group. The gentlemen on the
  workhouse board call Oliver a savage who is
  destined for the gallows.
• After Olivers outrageous request for more food,
  the board schemes to apprentice him to a brutal
  master, hoping that he will soon die.
• So even when the upper classes claim to be
  alleviating the lower-class predicament, they
  only end up aggravating it. In order to save
  Oliver from what they believe to be his certain
  fate as a criminal, the board essentially ensures
  his early death by apprenticing him to a brutal
  employer.

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Dickens Artistry

• Dickens achieves his biting criticism of social
  conditions through deep satire and hyperbolic
  statements.
• Throughout the novel, absurd characters and
  situations are presented as normal, and Dickens
  often says the opposite of what he really means.
• For example, in describing the men of the parish
  board, Dickens writes that they were very sage,
  deep, philosophical men who discover about the
  workhouse that the poor people liked it! It was
  a regular place of public entertainment for the
  poorer classes a tavern where there was nothing
  to pay. . . .
• Of course, we know that Olivers experience with
  the workhouse is anything but entertaining and
  that the men of the parish board are anything but
  sage, deep, or philosophical.

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Dickens Humour

• By making statements such as these, Dickens
  highlights the comical extent to which the upper
  classes are willfully ignorant of the plight of
  the lower classes.
• Since paupers like Oliver stand no chance of
  defeating their tormenters, Dickens takes it upon
  himself to defeat them with sly humor that
  reveals their faults more sharply than a serious
  tone might have.
• Though Oliver himself will never have much of a
  sense of humor, we will eventually meet other
  boys in his situation who will join Dickens in
  using humor as a weapon in their woefully unequal
  struggle with the society that oppresses them.

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The Brontë sisters

• Charlotte (1816-1855) Jane Eyre
• Emily (1818-1848) Wuthering Heights
• Anne Agnes Grey

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The Brontë sisters
Charlotte, Emily and Anne all wrote successfully
in their short lives in Yorkshire and they all
wrote under pseudonyms. Jane Eyre and Wuthering
Heights are still popular today.
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Charlotte Brontë
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Jane Eyre --- The Story

• Jane lives with her aunt who is rude and unjust
  to her and sends her to a charity school for poor
  girls, where she lives an intolerable life and
  stays for eight years.
• Then Jane becomes a governess to a little girl in
  the family of a squire called Mr. Rochester. The
  squire falls in love with her.
• While they are about to hold their wedding
  ceremony in the church, Jane learns that
  Rochester has got a wife who is mad.

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Jane Eyre --- The Story

• Shocked by the news, Jane flees from the house.
  She goes through many hardships. Finally helped
  by a parson, she gets the job of a teacher in a
  village school.
• Meanwhile, a great misfortune befalls Mr.
  Rochester and he becomes blind. Hearing that Mr.
  Rochester has become penniless and disabled, Jane
  Eyre hurries back to him and becomes his wife.

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Jane Eyre Chapter 5 - story

• Jane leaves Gateshead by coach alone for Lowood.
  She is introduced to some of the school's daily
  routines (e.g., Bible recitations, regular
  academic lessons, and abominable meals) and
  sleeps in a room filled with other girls.
• The next day she meets the kindly, beautiful
  superintendent, Miss Temple, and another girl,
  Helen Burns, who informs Jane that all the
  student are "charity-children".
• One of the nastier teachers, Miss Scatcherd,
  mistreats Helen in class, though the stoic Helen
  impressively bears her punishment.

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Jane Eyre Chapter Seven - story

• Jane passes a difficult first quarter at Lowood,
  with both the snowy weather and strict
  environment contributing to her misery.
• Mr. Brocklehurst visits Miss Temple's classroom
  and instructs her not to indulge the girls in the
  slightest way their privations will remind them
  of the Christian ethic.
• He spots a girl with curly hair and deems it
  unacceptable for an evangelical environment, as
  are all the top-knots on the girls' heads.
• Jane, nervous that Mr. Brocklehurst will convey
  Mrs. Reed's warnings about her behavior to Miss
  Temple, accidentally drops her slate. He
  chastises her in front of the class and three
  visiting fashionable ladies, telling everyone to
  ignore her the rest of the day, as she is a liar.
  Jane must stand on a stool in front of the class
  all day, with her only solace coming as Helen
  furtively smiles at her.

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Bildungsroman

• A novel of formation or a coming-of-age story ---
  the story of a childs maturation and focuses on
  the emotions and experiences that accompany and
  incite his or her growth to adulthood.
• Such a novel takes the reader through a
  character's young adulthood as she defines her
  identity against forces of opposition.

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Jane Eyre as Bildungsroman

• In Jane Eyre, there are five distinct stages of
  development, each linked to a particular place

1. Janes childhood at Gateshead
2. her education at the Lowood School
3. her time as Adeles governess at Thornfield

4?her time with the Rivers family at Morton and
at Marsh End (Moor House) 5 ?her reunion with and
marriage to Rochester at Ferndean.

• From these experiences, Jane becomes the mature
  woman who narrates the novel retrospectively.

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Themes of Jane Eyre

• A completely new woman image.
• The need for love contrasted with the need for
  independence

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A completely new woman image

• Jane Eyre represents those middle-class working
  women who are struggling for recognition of their
  basic rights and equality as a human being.

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The need for love vs. the need for independence

• Jane Eyre is very much the story of a quest to be
  loved. The main quest is Jane's search for her
  kindred spirits, for a sense of belonging and
  love, but her search is tempered by her need for
  independence ---
• Jane searches, not just for romantic love, but
  also for a sense of being valued, of belonging.
• Her fear of losing her autonomy motivates her
  refusal of Rochesters marriage proposal.

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The need for love vs. the need for independence

• Only when Jane gains financial and emotional
  autonomy, after having received her inheritance
  and the familial love of her cousins, can Jane
  accept Rochester's offer.
• Only after proving her self-sufficiency to
  herself can she marry Rochester and not be
  asymmetrically dependent upon him as her
  master. The marriage can be one between equals.
  
• With her marriage to Rochester, Jane finally
  feels completely liberated, bringing her dual
  quests for love and independence to a satisfying
  conclusion.

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Emily Brontë
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Wuthering Heights

• The story is told through flashbacks recorded in
  diary entries, and events are often presented out
  of chronological order. Nevertheless, the novel
  contains enough clues to enable an approximate
  reconstruction of its chronology.
• The novel deals with the love story between the
  hero Heathcliff who is a gipsy and Miss
  Catherine, the daughter of Heathcliffs
  benefactor.
• Catherines brother Hindley considers it a shame
  on the family to let a gipsy marry his sister.
  Unable to bear the insult, Heathcliff leaves
  Wuthering Heights.

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Wuthering Heights

• Three years later he comes back and finds Cathy
  has already married. He resumes his lovemaking
  and she dies heart-broken.
• Heathcliff becomes the master of the family and
  takes revenge upon the next generation. He treats
  Hindleys son Hareton very cruelly and compels
  Catherines daughter Cathy to marry his own
  sickly son. After his son dies Cathy falls in
  love with Hareton.
• Finally Heathcliff sees the futility of revenge.

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A Gothic Novel

• The Gothic tradition a style of literature that
  featured supernatural encounters, crumbling
  ruins, moonless nights, and grotesque imagery,
  seeking to create effects of mystery and fear.
• But Wuthering Heights transcends its genre in its
  sophisticated observation and artistic subtlety.
• As a shattering presentation of the doomed love
  affair between the fiercely passionate Catherine
  and Heathcliff, it remains one of the most
  haunting love stories in all of literature.

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Themes

• The Destructiveness of a Love that Never Changes
• The Conflict between Nature and Culture

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The Destructiveness of a Love that Never Changes

• Catherine and Heathcliffs love is rooted in
  their childhood and is marked by the refusal to
  change.
• Catherine and Heathcliffs love is based on their
  shared perception that they are identical.
  Catherine declares, famously, I am Heathcliff,
  while Heathcliff, upon Catherines death, wails
  that he cannot live without his soul, meaning
  Catherine.

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The Destructiveness of a Love that Never Changes

• Given that Catherine and Heathcliffs love is
  based upon their refusal to change over time or
  embrace difference in others, it is fitting that
  the disastrous problems of their generation are
  overcome not by some climactic reversal, but
  simply by the inexorable passage of time, and the
  rise of a new and distinct generation.
• Ultimately, Wuthering Heights presents a vision
  of life as a process of change, and celebrates
  this process over and against the romantic
  intensity of its principal characters.

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The Conflict between nature and culture

• In Wuthering Heights, Brontë constantly plays
  nature and culture against each other. Nature is
  represented by Cathy and Heathcliff who are
  governed by their passions, not by reflection or
  ideals of civility.
• Wuthering Heights symbolizes a similar wildness.
  On the other hand, Thrushcross Grange and the
  Linton family represent culture, refinement,
  convention, and cultivation.

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The Conflict between nature and culture

• However, the influence of Wuthering Heights soon
  proves overpowering, and the inhabitants of
  Thrushcross Grange are drawn into Catherine,
  Hindley, and Heathcliffs drama.
• Thus the reader may almost interpret Wuthering
  Heightss impact on the Linton family as an
  allegory for the corruption of culture by nature,
  creating a curious reversal of the more
  traditional story of the corruption of nature by
  culture.

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Thank You!